Progressive Hopes

Taking a break from my periodic dropping in on the Circus of Shame that some call the UN, I stumbled on a wonderful column I had clipped out long ago...was doubly pleased to swiftly find it on line. Well worth sharing - it is Joseph Sobran's piece titled "Progressive Hopes." It was originally published back in 2000 and was an indictment of the past century's tragic flirting with Progressivism. Sobran could never have anticipated what America would serve up, eight short years later.

To whet your appetite - from the piece:

Similarly the end of European colonialism was supposed to allow African and Asian peoples, freed at last from foreign exploitation, to enjoy the fruits of self-determination. In most cases the former colonies have gone from modest contentment to wretched poverty, epidemic disease, and terrifying tyranny, with little prospect of improvement. The United Nations, advertised as "the Parliament of Man," has fallen somewhat short of expectations; the best that can be said of it is that it has been nearly impotent, serving chiefly as an arena of mutually contradictory propaganda efforts to which nobody pays much attention anymore. We can be consoled by the reflection that it must have disappointed its chief architect, Alger Hiss

And this:

"I have a dream," proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr., whose "dream" was inspired by his reading of Marx and other progressive prophets. Like countless visionaries, he was unaware of Michael Oakeshott's admonition: "The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny." Which might serve as the epitaph for the twentieth century.

This will hopefully be the epitaph of the current administration, but in the meantime, we have tyranny to fight.